Episode 12: Enid Hwang - Persistence, Passion, and The Power of Community

0:07 Welcome, beautiful, humans to another episode of Role Models juicy conversations with beautiful humans. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of the human Beauty movement and your host today. I have a very special guest. I'm so excited to introduce her to you. This is Enid. Huang, she is the head of community and marketing at super great before. Or super great. She was at Pinterest for several years and I would love for her to share her story with you. Welcome Enid. Hi. Jennifer, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for being here. So, now everybody loves a great origin story. So urban legend has it that you were the sixth employee to be hired at Pinterest. Is that right?

0:52 This is correct. You have heard correctly. I would love for everybody to know what the inside scoop was on how you landed this job. Yeah, it's a great question and I hope it's also a fun story. Many, many moons ago we can. I was just a young 20-something person. I really wanted to work in technology. I mean, we're talking about 2009 time, period right titles, such as Community manager. We're honestly brand brand-new it was a time, period. Some of your listeners might not remember, honestly, when Brands didn't have Have branded presences on platforms like Facebook.

1:34 Twitter, Instagram literally didn't exist yet. So I wanted to sort of break into this space as somebody who loves social media and social channels, and just sort of online communities in general. But I didn't know how as a non programmer, or software engineer. Like, I wasn't a quote-unquote, technical person. So, how would I work at a tech company? And it turns out my particular Journey was just being a really, really early user. Pinterest. I found out about the service, actually, through my brother who's really into design. He sent me an invite when Pinterest is teeny teeny, tiny. I think I was like, the 364th user on the entire Pinterest platform.

2:16 So like that's how small and early days, it was, and at that time because the company was so young, like, truly a start-up, then the CEO of Pinterest, his personal email address, like his at gmail.com email, address was in. In the invite that you would receive to join the platform. So, obviously, I was able to reach out to him pretty easily. It was not that difficult, he wasn't trying to hide actually quite the opposite. You know, he was so in tuned with being involved in the community and learning who was signing up for his such a young company, such a young platform and getting to know them. So I reached out to him, I had a social media management job at a fashion company at the time and I was like, listen, I You know, I love Crafters.

3:01 I love DIY. I love makers. I also work with fashion bloggers day in and day out in my day job. And so let me know how I can help. Like, it seems like all these people that I interact with both online or offline in my day-to-day activities, would be like Prime users for Pinterest because I love the service so much and he was very sweet, and very kind, and essentially, just like, let me volunteer for the company a bit on the side because they didn't have enough funding to offer. Urmi a full-time job after they did raise some more funding and were able to bring on more employees they sort of remembered, my passion, and the effort that I put into growing, the community on their behalf and offered me a full-time role which was obviously exactly what I had hoped for. I didn't like dare to hope for it necessarily, but it came true for me.

3:51 I used to joke all the time that I was the first and last person to pester myself into a job Pinterest. But it worked out. It worked out That is amazing. I love that story. So you got to tell us what the early days were like I know that it's there's always like this funny cultural shift when things move from being so entrepreneurial and kind of like in somebody's apartment, right? And then funding comes and you got to stay Lee, got to turn into a big real company, what was it? Like make that transition I mean you totally nailed it. I feel like companies Can Shed many different skins over the course of the period of time. I was there for almost a decade. Decade. So when I started at Pinterest, it was exactly as you described. Our office was not an office.

4:36 It was a two-bedroom apartment in Palo Alto that we would go to and work out of. So that compared to when I left, which was like post IPO like being on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. There are so many lifetimes actually between those two poles, but I am very pleased to say that throughout actually my entire time at Pinterest like a couple things. Really important to me. Stay true. And that was it was incredibly warm. People were so respectful and kind and quirky. And I really feel like I worked with not only some of the most talented and intelligent and sharp people I'd ever met in my life, but also people who were so kind. And so just like welcoming and willing to share expertise and knowledge and partner with others, you know, to collaborate on projects.

5:29 Oh, that was a very, very special time. And something that was so important. I think to the company culture, it's so refreshing to hear that they were able to retain that even as they grew. Because I think that that is one of the things the kindness Factor the creativity you know you can still lean into that but the kindness factor in treating people with dignity and respect and with heart is something that is a bit of a rare thing as you grow. And that is very special, really happy to hear that from an Insider. Yeah, I mean that's a huge. Isn't a why I stayed for so long to write another part of it was being at an early stage company. You're able to have so much impact so quickly. You know, every day was different.

6:10 Some of those days were absolute like fire alarms but other days were really exciting. You know, I still remember being told one day, it's like, oh, you're going to help lead International efforts for Pinterest. Like you need to hire like a team of probably five people you have like six weeks to do it. And at the end The end of six weeks, you're going to be on the ground, like in London. And then after that, you're going to Paris and I was like, well, this is amazing. I literally never been to Paris before my first trip ever to that city was a work trip. It was also incredibly daunting. So you learn a lot about yourself. You're also able to just like, have a lot of impact and see the results of it, which is really exciting. So, I really appreciated that to. Wow, that is so, so cool.

6:54 So being the head of community from the start and obviously the community groups, a I mean I don't even know how many people are on Pinterest these days it's probably as many people planet Earth, right? I have gone down that rabbit hole of using Pinterest for hours on end, you know, just literally putting stuff in there. And so, what do you think it was that caused the community to grow so well, like, what was the secret sauce there? Well, honestly, I could answer this, like, pretty definitively at Pinterest and this was true. Even when I worked there, we always gave an incredible amount of credit just to our early creators and influencers. It's like, they were the ones who again, this is many years ago, right? So, remember when bloggers were like, just sort of starting to disrupt like the glossy magazine industry, right?

7:40 Just, when bloggers were starting to be invited front row, but it was like, controversial that they're like, fashion influence or sitting front row at Fashion Week and things like that. But they were these people who put their heart and soul into, curating, amazing imagery and sharing inspiration with others. And they really loved Pinterest because it's the Such a wonderful need for them and they in turn shared it with their audiences and friends of theirs in this sort of burgeoning nascent industry of influencers. So they really helped us spread the word. There's a couple women in particular Victorious. The she's probably known on the internet as SF Girl by the bay and she's like the o0g home decor blogger.

8:22 And she was our early champion of Pinterest, which is really exciting. So she helped this girl. A lot Joi chose somebody else, sort of in, like, The decor interior space. So folks like that really helped Champion Pinterest and help the company grow. And I will just give a shout out and say this background is not a real background, it's from Pinterest. I saw it Interiors for the gift that keeps on giving. It's the gift that keeps on giving and you know having been in the beauty industry for as long as I have been I'm like a dinosaur OG and the beauty industry to. And I remember when we would put together the vision boards using magazines and we do the tear sheets, We cut them out or when we would do inspiration for a photoshoot, we would put together the mood boards, and it would all be, you know, rubber cement glue on foam core, we'd have Stacks and stacks of magazines. This September editions and the movies and the women who are dailies and like all of that and that would be the way that we would present.

9:19 So what the new looks would be, and it's like Pinterest, just change the game even from a business standpoint, should be able to easily put together Collections and then having private boards was like all of those features. Has really helped to make it so much more than I think. The original idea was, and I think that that's part of the genius of growing and listening to who your members are, who your community is. Now, I would wish to use the platform right, 100%. Yeah. Being Community First, and really obsessed about in the beauty industry, your customer in the tech World, your user, your end user is also your customer right, like, just being completely obsessed with what are their needs, what's their feedback, right? Some of it?

9:59 Can be glowing and positive. Sometimes it can be bugs that you have on your site and what you could be doing better. But listening, most of all is so important and taking that into consideration as like one of the most important perspectives that you can have as you focus on your business. I also want to give such a shout out to Silicon Valley to Tech to NorCal in particular, for changing the game in terms of culture in business. Because, you know, when I first started and I was thinking about tech, you know, this was a long time ago and I was And I think it was AOL was like the big place to work but I was when I was coming off and you know all of that and you know there were there were a few others as well but my first job was with a company in local and wide area networks because I thought that that's what I should do.

10:45 It was not really my passion but it was like that was where business was? And my first manager was an ex IBM or blue suit, white shirt, red tie, and I would come in and he'd be like you're not wearing that I like, literally like that. It was just Such an old-school misogynistic culture of this is not appropriate, this is not professional. And it is such a relief to see the casualisation the change and all these Kick-Ass women coming into the Forefront and really stepping up and taking positions of leadership. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I totally agree. Yeah. Pinterest is also a very family-friendly environment, you know, our CEO.

11:25 When he very first started, the company was not a dad yet but then quickly became a dad of 2 and always being very family-friendly. Our first engineer at Pinterest. Second second engineer hired at Pinterest was also a dad, so, like right out the gate, you know, just making sure that it's okay, you can go home. We all work very hard, but we're also adults and like we don't have to like see you physically present to like know that you're on top of the things that you need to do. Right? Having that flexibility. And friendliness is very important. That's nice too. And of course technology Tables that even more rather than having desktops and being a slave to your cubicle and not being able to go home and had a few minutes, your nights and my career where I literally did work through the night in my office and so it's nice that's not the case anymore.

12:14 Either what do you think we're some of your biggest Lessons Learned aside from listening to community. Was there anything else that really struck you as being like Mom this is really a good way of living or a good way of building a company. Well I suppose more on the career from earlier. I mentioned that I worked With so many incredible people like truly, I want to know them for the rest of my life. People, literally, I want to know them for the rest of my life, even long. After I hope we stop working. Right? And we're retired, I hope they remain in my life. And so what that experience really taught me is number one that you don't have to put up with like the brilliant but terrible person to be around, right? But you don't have to tolerate that that there are equally brilliant people that you will love to spend your time and if you Really, really great people and they support you and you support them. The rest will follow.

13:05 It will help. Just he's all of like the difficult transitions. I can just sometimes come up through business, right? Like going through hard priority changes, restructures, tightening of the belt, right? Like, we're entering like this macro economic climate, where it feels like, there might be another recession. Like this is a climate that we're operating in today and 2022, and I had always thought of networking as Going out of your way to try to meet more, senior people who are further along in their career, and of course, that can still be really valuable to to find like a dedicated Mentor or just a completely different perspective. But I really learned that you can Network by working and the peers that you have around you that start with you at a certain company or are quote unquote, like around your level years of experience, that becomes your Professional Network.

13:56 For me. Now, like a decade on words, right? I'm still rely. On some of these people that I met and came up with that Pinterest and I lead on them for advice all the time at my current company. At super great, they asked me questions, we support each other, each other's career wins especially as women, right? Like I have just found that so nurturing that networking is not about like looking ahead constantly and trying to find an opportunity above you, so to speak. But looking side to side at your peers and treating your teammates as like, this is your future professional. Network and you're building it every single day by building solid relationships with them. And then, I would say the other one is because startup life founding your own business and any form whether it's Tech or beauty, or otherwise is really demanding.

14:43 So just setting aside real time to check in, with yourself, from time to time. And make sure that you're not just, you know, placing One Foot In Front of the other, but thinking about your longer term career goals, Bring It Back to Basics every now and again and just making sure that you feel. Your company, your brand, whatever it is that you're trying to do. Feels on track is so important. Because sometimes it's very easy to get bogged down by the day-to-day and that type of pace and environment. And I love that. That's the way that you started it Pinterest. It was you were following your passion. I was like, you love scrapbooking. It was just something that you just naturally would do even by volunteering and then look what it turned out to be. It's just like continuing to follow your love and your joy and realizing that you don't have to put up with the naysayers.

15:29 And you don't have to put up with the Egos and whatnot that, you know, they'll have their place. But within the network of people, it's all just you're there to have fun and learn and grow and you'll continue doing that throughout a lifetime. I think that that is just such special recognition in terms of how it helped you in your career and how you continue, living your life. And then for others, that might be looking for what they want, their next chapter of their lives to means. Oh, thank you so much for that. Now you've moved over to super great. I am so excited number one because I Early life, super great. And I'm really excited to introduce it to our listeners because I'm sure that there is a lot of people who probably don't know about the app yet that we want to introduce you to. So please tell us all about it. Yes I am so excited for this transition because I've been working at super great for a year-and-a-half basically. Now and super great is a video First Community of beauty enthusiasts, who have at this point, created over 200,000 video reviews on over and like 40,000 products. They love Of so it's really just the most Vibrant beauti Community.

16:33 I think that exists online every single day, every single minute there are people on super great sharing looks tips, personal recommendations and encouragement to one another. So that's sort of like, the everyday experience on. Super great is this ability to tap into, as well, as share with fellow Beauty Enthusiast, what's working? What's not working? Find the next new new thing for your shelf. And then on top of that, we also To have this live stream experience, which is very special. So, there's livestream shopping events. Users can also redeem free, like reward. Drops Jennifer, you've participated in this from humanist, so like literally the ability to redeem, like free full-size beauty products just by participating. In this always always on beauty Community is really, really fun and it covers everything beauty related. So you've got your makeup, your skincare, obviously Hair Care tools, Anything that's going to be on your vanity. Pretty much is probably been reviewed or talked about on super great.

17:36 Oh my God. It is really, really cool. As far as just the ability to find people if you're interested in a specific product and want to hear a bunch of different reviews and experience on that, how to use it demos, it's really an amazing app. So if everybody goes over and just takes a look at Super grade on wherever they download apps, you can find it and it's really easy to make an account and start scrolling, start popping around, and you'll see what it's That. So, what was it that caused you to be interested in moving over, where you headhunted? Or is this something that you were pursuing on your own? That's a great question. Very candidly, I spent almost a decade at Pinterest and had seen many different phases of that company. The two-bedroom apartment phase, the New York Stock Exchange face.

18:19 A lot changed towards the end of it. I did realize and know that my heart really lies in the earlier days and that feeling of every day was an adventure. You know, you are able to transform the team around you, the projects that you were tasked with sometimes even like the trajectory of the business, right? Like week, over week month over month and that's so exciting. And really, honestly, I think such a privilege definitely has its challenges to. So I was seeking that environment again a smaller company where I can make a big impact. And most importantly though, like a company that I really, really believed in. That's What drew me to Pinterest. It was very like, Heart and intuition first as you picked up on so I absolutely require the same thing for my next gig, right? Like if it's not something that I couldn't see myself, not only working on every single day but using as a regular person every single day but it wasn't going to pass muster for me and I actually I found super great bringing it all together, I found super great through a woman. I had worked with before at Pinterest and she was one of those people that I had.

19:28 So looked Up to, she was so brilliant. We had worked together on a couple projects and I just always really appreciated, her perspective on things mr. Maturity her Talent honestly being around her. So she introduced me to super great when she found out that I was starting to look again and she was like listen and extremely biased because I'm an investor. But download this app. If you don't like it, we'll never speak of it again. If you do like super great, like truly like the my bad, we'll just never say that name again. But if you do like it then I will connect you to the team and see if there's a position there for you. So literally, my first impression of super great, I downloaded it from the App Store.

20:11 I watched to video reviews and I bought a $32 skin serum and I was like hmm this is this is working. Yeah, and now that I've been on the app for a while since working here. Now I feel like I have like an advanced chemistry. Three Degree from like 16 year olds who just like share all of their knowledge on super gray. So. Yeah, that's I just fell in love number one with the app itself and the community itself, I saw right away. I saw this community of like really enthusiastic beauty lovers geeking out amongst themselves sharing really useful information. So useful in fact that I went out and bought something, I also saw like such enormous potential for creators and influencers to like build their And just sort of take a leadership positions in this community and then I started meeting the team at super great and it just checked off every box in terms of culture and integrity that desire to be truly Community First. I could tell right away from meeting Tyler and Dan, the co-founders and then Eliza the very first employee at super great.

21:22 I was like they have thought about the community since day 0 like truly, and that's why it's so exciting. And so vibrant and flourishing today, right? You know, a couple of years later was because of those early efforts. So I was pretty hooked right away and as a brand person, I can highly no just essentially endorse everything that you said, because every single person that I have been in contact with on the inside has been just adorable. I have to think they are just the sweetest people with such right energy and super fun to work with and really just Well do anything, which is very unusual. I will say, you know, just like going out of their way to help and make things smooth.

22:06 I just admire that so much and so you know, from a cultural standpoint and you can tell how it spills out into the community and how all of their front-facing imagery and marketing is presented. Certainly, you know, it's colorful it's bright, it's super fun and its exuberance. So I obviously I'm such a massive fan of, super great because I recognize how positive the community is and it's not really easy for a lot of communities to be So positive, we look at social media. A lot of people are like, if you want to stay positive, stay off of social media. Like you know, it's just sick for your help. It's like, do not do it, it's just dangerous and And yet when I go on to super great, it never feels that way. It feels so uplifting, and naturally supportive. So, how do you think that was? I mean, was it by Design, was it the ethos, how is it able to be maintained?

22:52 It's just a curious thing to me, short answer, 100% by Design. I really do think Referencing? What you were just talking about, right? I think there's these huge Legacy social platforms, right? Where you do go on there and there's literally a term for it. It feels like a doom scroll, right? Or you get fomo or you just don't want to be part of the conversation. And I think those things happen because it was not done by Design from the early days, to Foster an incredible amount of safety and positivity and like truly is Established these Norms, maybe it was a little bit of the opposite, right?

23:32 Which is the norm was to be loud or confrontational. And that's what would help you get eyeballs and engagement and attention, right? So it's actually designed almost to be the opposite. Whereas super great from again, literally and I mean this day Zero, it was designed to be safe. And that's because actually, before super great was even an app with our beautiful rainbow logo, it started originally as a mental well-being, at that was called huddle. So, the origin story is actually around like video based communication for mental well-being issues, that any user might want to talk about on what was formerly known as huddle. And what was interesting is that a lot of their early users actually coalesced around, like, self-esteem and topics related to beauty or skincare was young.

24:20 People sort of sharing tips and encouragement with one another. So, literally, from Day Zero before, super great was officially born Dan Tyler Eliza those first three people that I mentioned, they followed that Community feedback and saw what people were doing on this service and then created the rest of the platform around that behavior that they wanted to Foster their like okay if people want to talk about beauty and talk about skin care and have like a safe supportive environment to do that, how do we do that? Because that's what they're asking for, that's what they're saying, is important to them. So it was by Design from the very beginning. The notion that super-great is filter, free is not just a tagline.

25:04 Like we see, it's a often real people, real reviews, real Beauty. And that's because you literally cannot upload a video of yourself onto super great with post processing or editing. It makes it a little bit more difficult to put content on super great because you have to do it using our app. But that's a line that we've drawn in the sand because it prevents people from, you know, just photoshopping themselves a little bit. It which again is not wrong but I do think if you're going to be Beauty specific, it can create some really warped Impressions, right? It can create behaviors where people are trying to one-up one another based off of their appearance a little bit or judge each other on their appearance.

25:46 But super-great is fundamentally. Not about that. It's not about your appearance, it's about knowledge. It's about recommendations. It's about what's working. What's not worked, right? And only if you are truly filter, free, And authentic in that respect. Can you get trustworthy information back and yeah, that number one. When I first started thinking about doing a partnership as a brand with super great, I was told the origin story and to me it was so compelling number one because of being able to start out as one thing and then as an entrepreneur recognize the opportunity to shift and pivot that's me was just like really extraordinary and then also how there was such a Heat map Center if you will about beauty and mental Wellness.

26:33 Because there is something about, you know, what's going on inside and how it manifests on the outside and The Duality or the symbiotic relationship about ourselves, our well-being, and the mirror. And so from that standpoint, the fact that it is filter free, the fact that it is real as real as an app can get to me does live and breathe its initial intent which was to help too. Posture, while being other are probably some other things that I might have suggestions on. But that to me is so big and so important as far as a differentiator, from a lot of other social media where it's all curated and it's all, you know, it is about like image first more than building community and being a real human being offering suggestions or advice or how to's and such for other people to benefit from. And so yeah, I definitely see that and it's really I think it's very special.

27:29 And it's nice that it is helping to change what social media is and it's doing it by virtue of the fact of understanding, what were those aspects of big platforms social media that may have been leading to mental and wellness? Even if it wasn't intended, I remember seeing the documentary where the guy was like, I invented the Facebook, like, and it was because I wanted to spread positivity, like, hey, I like this but then it became a competition like who has the most likes and he's like who would have not I wouldn't have known no one would have known, but then it's just the way that the tools are used in such an environment. And so, yeah, it's that diligence of really keeping forth like are we being purveyors of Wellness because the sustainability of your platform is going to be on the well-being of your community, right?

28:16 Yeah, 100%. And it's like listen, we're probably not going to get it 100% right all of the time, but interrogating, those choices when we're making those decisions. Ins is important, right? Like another active decision that we've made is there are no subscriber counts that are visible, right? You can see who has subscribed to you on, super great, but I cannot for instance, go to your profile, Jennifer and CE o--. She has X number as like subscribers / followers, right? So just like reducing pressure? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then just like, completely, honestly, like safety ongoing safety.

28:56 There are always going to be trolls, right? Or somebody who comes into a community and just like doesn't understand the Norms or very honestly, they're probably going through something personally and they take it out on internet strangers, ready? So, you know, we actually it's a point of Pride that we manually screen. Every single video review that's made on super great to make sure that anything inappropriate or just like spammy, somebody trying to game the system burn super coins for free stuff without genuinely. Like, putting in the effort to make a real review that stuff gets like muted. And those people are like reached out to, and we asked them, you know, to uphold their Community guidelines and are norms. So that ongoing work is really important to. Yes, yes, wow.

29:45 That is really good to know now, super great just recently cleared, I understand a 20 million dollar Series be fundraise. Is that right? Yeah, relative autonomy. Yeah, we don't. A two-bedroom apartment anymore as an office but we are also fully remote company. So how many employees do you have right now? Gosh, I think the last time I looked we're like just under 50. I want to say so we've grown a lot in the past year. Wow, that's amazing. And so I'm going to look back on this episode next year and it's going to be like you're gonna have a closet from your lips to God's ears. Well, if you're there, it's To happen because clearly you're the only reason why things grow definitely not true, The Village.

30:38 But so what is the funding primarily going to be used for ya? Honestly, if I were to bucket into two things I think lots of new features and particularly ways to extend the joy and rewards of being part of the community, right? We just really strongly believe. And again, it goes back to Very much this community user first ethos, that's always been present at super great and if our community is winning then super great will win, right? Because if you join a beauty community and you're able to redeem a humanist oil, right? Your first week on the app, you join a live stream that you love.

31:20 You're able to purchase you know a product that you couldn't get anywhere else at a special discount. You're absolutely going to tell your friends about that, you know, if You are an influencer who hosts live streams on super great and you're able to build an audience and just have like this really special experience on our app. Only with us and you feel like oh this is different from like alive that I've done on other platforms like the community does not mess around on super-great they're here to hang out with me ask questions you know shop with me if they experience success. Ultimately super great will to obviously from a brand perspective very much so that Thing is true. If you come on as a brand founder or representative and host a live streaming, you see that engagement, you're obviously able to like connect with your customer and sell products.

32:10 Launched a new collection, maybe like you will come back to our platform, right if you see that return on investment. So yeah, you know, let's see some of like the recent things. We've applied the funding to you do. Now more than 150 people can live stream on super great. They're all hand selected. If they're able to essentially you know, build their creator Brands and their influencer brands on super great with us and earn sales commission by doing that which is really exciting, hopefully for them. And we've recently made a bunch of updates and Launches on our business portal, which I think Jennifer, you were probably a little bit familiar with so just constantly making it easier for Brands to essentially create and set up their own quote, unquote, like virtual store Front, Great as well.

33:00 And lots of bonuses to for users. So being able to turn our digital currency of super coins into recurring, shopping discounts getting five dollars off for different discounts here. And there just based off of participating in the community is, is something that we can like pass on to our community and, to our user. Right, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think that seeing the new features especially being able to shop within the app, which is fairly new. I mean I was wondering I was like they're going to have to figure out a business model for this sooner or later and I was like yeah I did it. I'm congratulations you guys right on schedule.

33:43 Oh yeah. That that works out really well. You know I'm not a fan of giving people advice because everybody's experience is their own but I'm curious with your transition here, are there any other things that you learned along the way that you think could be really valuable for other people, too? That's such a good question and I love the way that you framed it to because truly everybody's situation is different and even everybody's aspirations and dreams are different. I mean, as corny as it is, I do have to say that persistence really matters right? The first time I reached out to Pinterest way back in the day, more than 10 years ago now and ask for a job. You know, they very, very politely and sweetly told me, no. Sorry, we literally don't have any money right now so we can't hire you.

34:29 And that could have been the end of the conversation forever and my life would be really different now. I hope I would still be working in Tech, but it maybe it wouldn't have been Pinterest. Maybe it now, it wouldn't be super great. But, you know, I will give myself credit for taking that in stride and just being like, okay, well that's not a negative judgment on me, right? I'll just check back again later, I will do stuff for free, I will just stay in your face until you're so sick of me that when you do have a fundraising ground you'll remember me. And believe that I, you know, let some value to you, and that's exactly what happened. So I definitely took away that it's okay to just follow up, do not let.

35:10 No just be the end of it and certainly do not. Let one know, be the end to your aspirations. Right? Very often. It's about fit, it's about timing. And yeah, hearing no sucks, of course, but to interpret it as a reflection on you as a person and your skill set, and the fact that you might be Be wrong for this type of work forever would be such a disservice to yourself and is very often not what people mean. Anyway, so that's number one, and then I think other valuable lesson, obviously I'm just kind of, I'm a follow my gut kind of person, but I do think it matters. I mean, we spend so much time at work that working on something a business, a brand a product that you really personally believe in it makes the hard times a lot.

35:59 It makes it easy times so much fun and it really does help power through especially as an entrepreneur. I think, or in an entrepreneurial environment, those moments when you need to reset. And remember why you're there and you can point to why you're there without missing a beat, it's like, I love this thing. I believed in it, I use it every day and when that comes so just like intrinsically, it's not nice. Lately. I follow this fellow. His name is David Meltzer, and he has such wise advice, and one of his pieces of advice is, of course, the person that doesn't like advice. I just found this pretty compelling but he said what if I told you that you were 23 nose away from a billion dollars and of course, 23 is a hypothetical number, but he said a billion dollars, the person of your dreams, anything that you want. What if you were 23 nose away from that? If you got that first no you wouldn't feel bad about it, you would be excited because then there's another There are no and you're getting closer to your goal. So maybe that first snow was like, okay the ask wasn't right, you get to the second one.

37:06 It's like, okay, well, maybe I need to adjust this. Maybe the timing was wrong and it just gets you to a place where you're finding you're growing, the timing gets better and you're really getting to a place where boom you've got success and so yeah, thinking about rejection is taking it personally or oh my gosh I'm a failure like those, do you? No good. Those certainly are a disservice to you and just changing. That mindset to be one of you, we can call it persistence or we can just call it continuing to learn and practice and continuing, you know, in the Journey of life to to getting better and refining, what your skills are, how you're asking for things, how confident you are in yourself and your abilities. It didn't sound like, you had any lack of confidence in your abilities. All says, like, you know, here I am. I'm willing to help and sometimes that's all that it takes that motivation and that desire to be part of something, because you feel that the fit is so, right? And if they sense, I don't know if they realize that you are a go-getter, then yeah, it's going to be worth it and it's going to carry you through whatever that next chapter is of your life. I think this other piece of advice was never work for assholes which I think that we already touched on to. So that's a really good one.

38:15 That's a really, really good one. Do you have? Do you have any favorite quotes or mantras that you live by? Well actually, as you were talking just now about this idea of reframing persistence to Just around this idea of like, constant growth. Like I do think that's such a wonderful way of thinking. About just life in general, there are hardships in any Avenue whether it's career or something else. And the truth is like the journey is long. Ideally, it's very long, right? Like and I think there's kind of like this pressure to feel that. Oh, by a certain age, you should have everything figured out there. You should be, you know, at this level you should have this title. You should have that etcetera, etcetera. And even for some of the really quote-unquote successful people who do seem to be hitting, all of those Milestones supposedly right on schedule.

39:08 If you truly sit down with them, you will find that their roads, through those Milestones were really twisty and really tourney and full of unexpected moments and filled with rejection and know. So, you know, when I started working at Pinterest I can't say I knew any of That it was youth. It was being naive, it was being passionate, and that was a special concoction. So, for me, when I think of like quotes our mantras, there's this saying that's never forget, your beginner Spirit, which I have always appreciated because I use it a multitude of ways, which I'm not sure is correct.

39:49 But I used in a multitude of ways which is if you approach something with like fresh energy and this idea that you don't have all the answers and that's okay. It kind of takes like, Korean off, which is a nice and sometimes frees you up to find Solutions or creativity that you wouldn't have thought of. Otherwise, I apply it all the time when I work at super great one could say, oh I seen it all, I worked at Pinterest but that's not true at all. Super great is fundamentally a different company, it's a different Community. I have a different team that I'm responsible for so I cannot pretend that I have all the answers. The best thing that I can do is like show up every day with like fresh energy.

40:29 And try to find the best solution at hand. And that could look really different from my past experience. And that's okay, too. Wow, I love how humble you are. You know, with the fact that you have had this Grand experience, you're taking it in stride and saying like you know what, I'm a beginner and this is starting fresh. This is something brand-new and yeah there may be things that I can dip back into that may be helpful or insightful going forward but it's not necessarily the answer. We're going to figure it out as we go along. It's so true. That's so much more On. I mean I would rather not have all the answers. I would rather like have some experience and some insights to draw upon when I need them.

41:09 Maybe yeah, I like built up a little bit of like a bank of confidence but every day is a new day, you never know solutely. Absolutely. Well, last question for you, what really is inspiring to you or their people or do you have role models, are there things that just like you know, really set you Ablaze That's a really good question. I mean, I have to be really corny for a moment and give much due credit to Dan and Tyler the co-founders of super great and allies that the first employee at super great and really the entire team. Like I'm the type of person that I get so inspired and energized by other people. I think that's why I started my career in community. I get energy from seeing other people succeed and really helping them and being around people. And there is Diaz.

41:59 That is really special to me and I think all credit goes to Tyler Dan analyzer for like, fostering. This environment, not just for super great employees, but for the community to similarly you know bring it back to this idea of like persistence. My mom, I have to say is one of the most inspiring people in my life. She has attained so much in her career but that path to where she wanted to get to. It was filled with Rejection. It was filled with this. Notion of the bamboo ceiling and could, you know, a Chinese woman who is also an immigrant attained, like, certain levels of leadership, and hold certain positions, that, let's be very honest.

42:40 She works in Academia are traditionally, very white, very traditional, very dominated by men. She just kept going and she refused to let it get her down entirely, and she just found new ways and new opportunities, to make it to where she wanted to go. And, uh, We'll ask them to grow up with and just continue to see today. Well we love you Mom. Thanks oh model to Enid. Enid thank you so much. It was such a pleasure to have you today on Role Models. Everybody go to your app store. Download the super great app right now. Look for humanist. Beauty. Absolutely on the apples are so good. I love me.

43:23 You can follow me. I have a few things there and I'll continue to add more and I'm hoping to do a new live stream. There again soon I promise to sound bath. The last life that I was that. I was on, I promised everybody, I would do a guided meditation and sound bath, which I think would be really, really fun for everybody. But mental note, but it was such a pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah. You too. Thank you again. Jennifer, this was so lovely.